Monthly Archives: August 2016

Scientists sponsored by the office of Naval Research (ONR) have genetically changed a standard soil bacterium to make electrical wires that not solely conduct electricity, however are thousands of times diluent than somebody’s hair.

As electronic devices progressively bit all sides of people’s lives, there’s growing craving for technology that’s smaller, quicker and a lot of mobile and powerful than ever before. Because of advances in technology (manipulating matter on AN atomic or molecular scale), business will manufacture materials solely billionths of a meter in thickness.

The ONR-sponsored researchers — light-emitting diode by life scientist Dr. Derek Lovley at the University of Massachusetts Amherst — say their built wires is created mistreatment renewable “green” energy resources like solar power, greenhouse emission or plant waste; are fabricated from non-toxic, natural proteins; and avoid harsh chemical processes usually accustomed produce nanoelectronic materials.

“Research like Dr. Lovley’s may lead to the event of latest electronic materials to satisfy the increasing demand for smaller, a lot of powerful computing devices,” said Dr. Linda Chrisey, a program officer in ONR’s Warfighter Performance Department, that sponsors the analysis. “Being ready to manufacture very skinny wires with property materials has monumental potential application as parts of electronic devices equivalent to sensors, transistors and capacitors.”

The centerpiece of Lovley’s work is Geobacter, a bacterium that produces microbic nanowires — hair-like supermolecule filaments projecting from the organism — facultative it to create electrical connections with the iron oxides that support its growth within the ground.

TSRI (The Scripps Research Institute) scientists achieved a huge success by creating RNA in the laboratory. They hope to study thelife forms related on the proteins and DNA. This is possibly the beginning of the lab made RNA molecules produced through special enzyme of ribozyme. The conclusions from the research, reported in this week at the online previous edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, present the scientists have thrive in producing ribozymethat mainly deliver together increase genetic details and to produce functional molecules.

The innovative ribozyme can copy diminutive lengths of RNA competently and do transcription on longer RNAs to create functional RNA molecules through complex structures. It also comes closer to obtain what scientists see in the RNA replicator to encouraged life before modernbiology, where protein enzymes now manage gene copy and transcription. The team begun via an enzyme that developed and enhanced upon through various studies from the early 90s period. Before, the ribozyme forms extremely limited in the RNA series they could manageand couldn’t copyRNAs moderately compound structures. Due to those restrictions, they also couldn’t accomplish complete RNA copy which needs the copy of paired strand back into original copy. The selection related to the capability of newly synthesized RNAs to essentially function through correlating to their objectives expressed by Horning.

(At age 19, Londoner James Proud decided to skip out on college and move to the States.)

This sensor measures…

temperature, light, motion, humidity, sound, and even the particle counts for pollen and dust in the air!!!

It also includes a tiny circular “Sleep Pill” that clips on your pillowcase. For most sleep trackers, who move or walk around while sleeping, the Pill records your sleeping patterns by measuring how much you move during sleep. But it demands you to wear a wristband and strap a sensor to your mattress.

The two gadgets report back to your IOS or Android device through the Sense app over Bluetooth.

When you look at the app in the morning, it displays a timeline of the prior evening.

For example… It might show you that

“At 3AM, you tossed and turned a bit because some lights came on, and at 6AM, your dog started howling, which caused some more stirring”.

This sense also includes a microphone that listens to your room as you sleep, so it can actually play back the noises that woke you!!!

However, as you can also think about, this sensor can be risky because of privacy…

Fortunately, Sense only records sound spikes, not all sounds, and stores sounds on your phone and not in the cloud. Also, Sense’s mic only turns on once you’ve stopped moving and gone to bed.

“It’s not always recording.”, “There’s a rolling 5-second window where it listens for loud events like a truck or dog.” –Proud–(The one who made this sensor)

The zika virus is now being transmitted by mosquitoes in the continental US and areas of Rio with issues count is going too high. Even after their months-long outbreak, it’s been a rather scary time for those breathing in strained areas.

But here’s the good news that not one but three vaccines have been displayed to completely protect the non-human hominids from Zika virus and they’re now available for human trails. Three vaccine candidates have been trialed by the researchers of US, a vector vaccine; a purified inactivated virus vaccine (ZPIV); and one that uses a meager section of the Zika virus genome injected into a safe adenovirus. All three blocked infections in animal trials.

All of these were granted full protection when they were used to inoculate 20 monkeys after a time period of 2 weeks and none of the animals displayed any negative impact.

The news that is impacting everyone is that the zika virus is still not completely cured. Even though the human trials will be conducted but it will still take years for the market ready version to come up from deployment.The most that are affected with this virus are pregnant women and over 1700 cases have been linked to microcephaly to it in the previous year.

Microcephaly can let babies be produced with abnormally tiny heads thus leading to retarded brains, tissue expanding, and a number of other dangerous birth deformities.

Marijuana, also known as cannabis, is one of the most widely used drugs around the world. A new study has found genetic relationship between marijuana dependence and genes, according to the article published in Live Science. There were many biochemical research of marijuana dependence, but this is first time to link marijuana dependence with genetics. Interesting fact is that the study showed some overlap between genetic risk of marijuana dependence and that of depression, which might explain why two symptoms often occur together.

In the experiment, the researchers looked at about 14,000 Americans’ genetic information. Between 18 and 36 percent of the people had marijuana dependence, and major goal for the study was to find the genetic variant known as single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, which are related to the symptoms of marijuana dependence.

In the study, the researchers found three genetic variants that are related to the symptoms of marijuana dependence. One of them was placed on the gene that is related to regulating the concentration of calcium in blood. According to the previous studies, the calcium signaling is related to the substance-using disorder of our body.

Another substance was found in the gene called CSMD1, which is related to the growth of our central nervous system. A thing that intrigues scientists in this result is that CSMD1 was also related to schizophrenia risk, said study co-author Dr. Joel Gelernter, a professor of psychiatry, genetics and neuroscience at Yale University School of Medicine in Connecticut.

Previous researches have shown that about 9 percent of the patient who used marijuana for medical purpose was addicted to it. However, by this research, scientists and doctors not only can develop the treatment for the patients with marijuana dependence, but also can prevent certain people with the genetic variants from having marijuana in medical purpose.

However, further researches are required in order to confirm the exact relationship between those three genetic variants and marijuana dependence, said the researchers involved in the study.

Fully grown Philornis downsi nourish on fruit, but during larvae stage it feeds onthe baby birds, generally small songbirds. While speaking about female flies, it lay their eggs in the bird nests. Once hatched fully, first-instar larvae move slowly into the nostrils of nestling birds, where they nourish on both tissue and blood. Better, second-instar larvae depart the restricted space of nostrils as well as hide out in the nest material during day time. They come out at night in order to carry on feeding on chicks.Philornis downsi plague takes a severe toll on the nestlings. In some conditions, every young in the infested nest is killed critically by the parasites. While speaking about the Philornis downsi, it is not inhabitant to the Islands of Galapagos.

These species was probable introduced unintentionally in the period of 1960s through imported fruit as well as yet has wreaked havoc on the endemic bird populations of island. Parasitism is one of the most common reasons of nestling death for minimum one species of the Darwin’s finch, as well as some think this is a root cause of decline in the number of landbirds in famous Galapagos Islands. The SIT (sterile insect technique) is a method which has been projected to control the Philornis downsi. This technique generates lots of sterilized insects that are released effective into a wild population. Females that companion with sterile males generate no offspring, therefore minimizing the mass of the next age group. SIT method has been mostly used to eradicate amount of screwworm flies and in managing some species of the fruit fly.

New studies have added more reasons for pregnant to stop smoking. In this study, the researchers found out that smoking while pregnant can alter the fetus’s DNA. These changes might explain how smoking during pregnancy can cause health complications such as low birth weight, asthma and cleft lips or palates.

Even though many medical researches shows that smoking while pregnancy can affect the fetus’s health, but 12% of pregnant in America are still smoking, according to the recent research published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. To examine the effect of smoking on fetus’s DNA, the researchers observed almost 7,000 newborns and their mothers all around the world. Using questionnaires and blood samples from the newborns’ umbilical cord, the researchers looked for the epigenetic changes of the newborn’s DNA. Epigenetic changes are alteration that does not change the sequence of DNA, but make certain genes to turn on or off.

The result showed that newborns from mothers who explain themselves as “sustained smokers” had an average 6,000 places where DNA differed from the DNA of newborns from nonsmoking mothers. The researchers also looked at the epigenetic changes of older children about the age of seven whose mother smoked during pregnancy, and many of the changes were still founded.

The researchers say that the epigenetic changes in the newborns are related to their previous research on asthma and cleft lips and palates. However, it is still unclear how smoking during pregnancy is related to the health complication of fetus, and further studies are needed to find out the how it works.